alt.hn

12/12/2025 at 12:56:15 PM

Chatbot-powered toys rebuked for discussing sexual, dangerous topics with kids

 https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/chatbot-powered-toys-rebuked-for-discussing-sexual-dangerous-topics-with-kids/

by smurda

12/12/2025 at 3:49:58 PM

I'm pretty sure that any internet connected child's toy with a microphone is a terrible idea from a privacy standpoint alone though. Parents learned this lesson a decade ago https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/blogs/barbies-data-pri...

Don't bug your home. Don't bug your children. There are lots of cool gifts besides a toy trojan horse that gives advertisers, data brokers, Sam Altman, and random hackers access to your child while they're alone in their bed at night.

by autoexec

12/12/2025 at 2:54:21 PM

“… AI toys shouldn’t be [..], period.”

by askl

12/12/2025 at 2:39:04 PM

Holy shit, the video demonstration is just toys reading Wikipedia to my ears, ok if you're a Puritan maybe it's blasphemous that kids are exposed to anything about sexuality...

by netsharc

12/12/2025 at 3:36:01 PM

"Kink allows people to discover and engage in diverse experiences that bring them joy and fulfillment" wasn't anywhere on the wikipedia page I saw. I'm guessing "Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. That is an established fact." isn't there either.

Considering how AI has a tendency to lie I'm not sure I'd be a great idea to give young children an AI toy even if it only read wikipedia pages while occasionally just making shit up without any understanding how to frame what it says in way that's appropriate for children. There's a lot of very adult and child-unfriendly things on wikipedia. I don't think I need to be a Puritan to not want my six year old told about Unit 731 as a bedtime story.

by autoexec